The subject invention generally relates to a vehicle axle housing including a suspension flange formed directly into the axle housing.
Medium and heavy duty vehicles include suspensions that are attached to axle housings in various different manners. Traditionally, these suspensions are welded to an immediately adjacent or upper surface of the axle housing, or are clamped to the axle housing to define a suspension mount interface.
The suspension mount interface creates many design challenges. There are a variety of suspension types and each type of suspension can have many different configurations. It is difficult to provide attachment hardware, i.e. brackets, clamps, fasteners, etc., which can accommodate all of these different suspension mount interface variations. Further, the fatigue life of the axle housing can be compromised or decreased in certain bracket attachment configurations. For example, high stress concentrations can be caused by poor geometry configurations for certain types of welded suspension brackets, which results in reduced fatigue life. Or when clamps are used, concentrated reaction areas from bolted brackets can cause high internal stresses due to cyclical deflections within the clamped joint, which causes fatigue to initiate inside the axle housing creating an “oil can effect.”
One proposed solution increases wall thicknesses of the axle housing. This reduces high external and internal stress concentrations but adds weight to the axle housing. This increases cost and decreases fuel economy, making the product less competitive.
There is a need for a suspension mount for a vehicle axle that can accommodate many different suspension types, and which does not require increased axle housing wall thickness. The suspension mount should be easily incorporated into existing axle housing configurations and should improve axle housing fatigue life in addition to overcoming the other above-mentioned deficiencies in the prior art.